Green goals

Well my friends my five green goals.... how have they been going? and how have I got on this past three weeks?....... you may well ask?

1 Not buying food in plastic bags, that's going ok just a few hic ups along the way, one in particular, the check out girl was astonished when I took the veg out of the plastic bags and told her that I didn't want my veg wrapped in plastic, she called her line manager and I explained to her what I was doing, amazingly she agreed and said that she would say something at her next meeting about over packaging.

The following week nothing had changed, so I bought a lot more of my vegetables from the market in Colchester and from the farm shop instead. Can you believe it the farm shop, has started using MORE plastic instead of less.... needless to say I had a word!!!

On another rant...... I have to get this off my chest. When buying fish and chips... it all comes beautifully wrapped in paper...( I still wish is was news paper, I'm sure that the chips tasted better) correct.. so why ...oh why...... does my local chip shop think we need to RE-PACKAGE and put the already adequately packaged food into a dreaded PLASTIC BAG which not only has an environmental cost but the fish and chips go soggy!!!!!!... needless to say I had words.......

2 Turning off the electric standbys and lights etc. This one has been easy to imply, my son has been threatened with me not ironing his clothes if he doesn't turn his stuff off.... it is working.

3 This aim is going ok I have managed not to buy anything that I didn't truly need, except for some pumpkins, they looked so lovely all together in the farm shop. The good thing is they will keep for a few weeks and I can recycle them into soup.

4 I have been collecting the rubbish on my journeys along my street for three weeks now here is a list of what I have collected;

2 coke cans
1 plastic carrier bag and several other pieces of random plastic
1 plastic lid
3 crisp packets
1 milk carton, squashed ( I suspect that this one was in the recycling for the dustbin men and had escaped on the day of collection)
3 assorted plastic water/juice bottles
1 lost glove
12 rubber bands (from the postmen)
1 piece of white crumpled paper an old envelope with a lovely stamp on it
and last of all a ring pull and a bit of metal from a car.

Words fail me, we live in a lovely village, why?

5 The fir cone idea has been a disaster, they have all started to rot in the wet weather that we have been having, so I'll have to re-think this one.

Well as you can see I am trying to make progress, I have the car this week, (we only run one, another of the green 'goals' we set ourselves a few years ago now) and without thinking I jumped in it to visit my daughter and grandson it wasn't until I was well on my way to Colchester that the guilt set in... I should have used the bus... it was the first time in months that I hadn't used the bus, I felt so guilty.